Lincoln J. Houde
Connie Bullis

ABSTRACT: For ecofeminists within academic contexts, the class-
room is another "contested terrain" where transformative eco-cultural
work should be integrated. In our case, we are a part of communication
studies and try to adopt ecofeminist insight as a position for questioning
dominant discourses and practices. To do this, we "incorporate popu-
lar culture as a serious object of politics and analysis" ( Giroux 1997 ,
148). It is our hope that popular culture can be used as an ecofeminist
tool for interrupting hegemonic power relations and encouraging criti-
cal-relational consciousness.

This paper reports an exploratory effort aimed at combining ecofem-
inist critiques with popular culture to employ an ecofeminist pedagogy.
It begins with an ecofeminist critique of the "animal-industrial-com-
plex" ( Noske 1989). In this critique, discursive moral agents are situ-
ated within the anthropocentric and androcentric culture ( Payne 1994).
It then articulates an ecofeminist teaching philosophy and describes
how that philosophy was applied in one case using an episode from a
prime time television cartoon. Finally, it draws conclusions about what
is accomplished through this exploratory case.

Ecofeminists and ecological feminists purport to reveal and
subvert interconnecting oppressions, particularly as they are related to the intersecting
oppressions of women, animals, and nature ( Adams & Donovan 1995; Donovan &

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